The Bone Garden: A Novel - Hardcover

Gerritsen, Tess

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345497600 ISBN 13: 9780345497604

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2007

Synopsis

The discovery of the skeleton of a woman murdered nearly two centuries earlier sends Boston medical examiner Maura Isles on the trail of a long-dead serial killer who terrorized Boston with crimes in which Norris Marshall, a Harvard Medical School student and reluctant resurrectionist, had become the prime suspect and enlisted the help of classmate Oliver Wendell Holmes to find and stop the murderer. 225,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"Fascinating... spectacularly gory... fast-paced." (Mail on Sunday)

From the Publisher:

This is a really special novel for Tess because it combines her detailed knowledge of the medical world (she was, of course, a doctor in her own right), her love of history and her gift for crime-writing.

It focuses on the single fact that in the 1840s women all over the world were dying in their millions of child-bed fever - and no one knew how or why the infection was being spread. The idea that surgeons - who were performing autopsies and then going into maternity wards without washing their hands - could be responsible was dismissed as scandalous - until a single doctor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, presented a paper on this subject in Boston in 1843. Holmes is one of the main characters in The Bone Garden, which also focuses on a terrifying serial killer who preys on medical students in particular. It is the novel Tess has always wanted to write.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0345497600
• ISBN 13: 9780345497604
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 370